Digital Literacy Development in Higher Education

Digital literacy in higher education encompasses the ensemble of skills, knowledge and critical practices required to access, evaluate, create and communicate information through digital technologies. Over the past decade, institutions have moved from treating digital literacy as merely technical proficiency towards recognising its broader dimensions, including social practices, ethical engagement and collaborative knowledge production. Curricular frameworks now integrate digital literacies across disciplines, emphasising multimodal composition, data literacy and responsible use of emerging tools such as artificial intelligence and immersive environments. Global shifts towards online and blended learning have accelerated investment in staff development, adaptive learning platforms and peer-supported initiatives to close digital divides. Moreover, critical perspectives have gained traction, interrogating power relations in algorithmic decision-making, platform governance and learner privacy. As higher education grapples with rapid technological change, digital literacy development is increasingly framed as a lifelong, context-sensitive process that underpins equity, employability and academic integrity on a global scale.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Research from all publishers

Recent studies have extended established theoretical models to explore factors shaping adoption of specialised academic tools. A 2023 investigation applied the Technology Acceptance Model to digital academic reading platforms, demonstrating that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, lecturer endorsement and self-efficacy jointly predict student attitudes and intentions. Structural equation modelling revealed that collaborative learning features and expectations of academic achievement significantly enhance acceptance, offering guidance for designers and educators to tailor reading tools to diverse learning contexts.

Another 2023 review bridged digital literacy and extended reality (XR) in popular science education, proposing a novel DL-XR framework with eight interconnected dimensions: access and understanding, evaluation, ethics and well-being, interaction, collaboration, creation, problem-solving and civic engagement. The study highlighted that while XR excels in immersive information access, its potential for active creation and teamwork remains under-utilised. The authors recommend embedding project-based learning to advance higher levels of digital literacy and empower learners as co-creators in virtual environments.

A 2022 systematic review distilled four core themes in digital literacy research: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and digital thinking. Analysing forty-three studies, it found a predominance of qualitative approaches and identified conceptual ambiguity surrounding the terms. The review calls for standardised definitions, interdisciplinary dialogue and longitudinal studies to better assess the impact of digital literacy interventions on learning outcomes and to inform policy frameworks in higher education.

Digital Literacy Development in Higher Education publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in digital literacy development in higher education across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Digital literacy: The ability to locate, evaluate, produce and communicate information using digital technologies in various social and academic contexts.

Technology Acceptance Model: A theoretical framework positing that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use determine an individual’s intention to adopt a technological system.

Extended reality (XR): An umbrella term encompassing augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality environments for immersive interaction and learning.

Structural equation modelling (SEM): A statistical method used to test and estimate relationships among observed and latent variables within a theoretical model.

References

1. Extending Technology Acceptance Model to higher-education students’ use of digital academic reading tools on computers. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (2023).
2. The role of digital literacy in augmented, virtual, and mixed reality in popular science education: a review study and an educational framework development. Virtual Reality (2023).
3. A systematic review on digital literacy. Smart Learning Environments (2022).